


Nick's Doubler

by wneleh



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: F/M, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, M/M, Mathematics, Nick Rush gets a happy place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 06:00:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2337755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wneleh/pseuds/wneleh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little bit of h/c I imagine happening between chapters 62 and 63 of Cleanwhiteroom's <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/578387/chapters/1037796">Force Over Distance</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nick's Doubler

**Author's Note:**

Nick lies in the arms of another man and thinks about his Doubler.

Two envelopes snatched from the bin, laid flat, long edges touching.

“When did you fall for maths?” she asks, her cheeks still flushed from Schumann. 

“You with me, Rush?” Arms tightening.

On each, he makes a pair of marks… Equidistant? That’s the word!

“My Nick, you’re truly smiling!” 

“I wish I knew what you were thinking,” Everett murmurs. “You seem happy.”

The closer marks – “hash marks,” Nick thinks – are “0”. This will be wrong. The further marks, at least, are labeled “1”.

“When I was six or seven,” he replies. 

“You might try to hold onto this,” Young says. “Just a thought.”

Now, carefully he slides the left, until its “0” meets “1”. And for the right, another hash mark, “2”. Another slide, another mark. A “3.” No, that’s simply a ruler! As “1”’s to “2”, “2” is to “4”. So that’s what he puts down.

“I made a Doubler one day. A primitive slide rule.”

“I’m ‘memberin’ my Doubler,” he explains.

Another slide, now “8”.

“My dad had one of those.”

“Anything I need to know about?” Young asks, always suspicious.

Another slide, “16”; then, “32”; and then there’s no more room.

“I don’t know where I got the notion,” Nick tells her. It’s spring, their first together. “I might have heard the term. I’m sure I’d never seen one, else I’d have done a better job I hope.”

“I’ll ask more later,” Young says. Of course he will.

Why does he keep the left marks “0” and “1”? And on the right, why keep the “0”? Why not figure downwards from the “1”, to ½ at least? 

“So what was it good for?” she asks. “Everything,” he says. 

“Just rest now,” and a hand goes through his hair.

Nick now prints, between right’s “2” and “4”, a hash mark, and a “3”. And then, between the “4” and “8”, a “6”. “6” is to “3” as “8” is to “4”, in life, and on his Doubler. 

“You know how, in music, A to A to A is just a doubling of frequencies?” “I think I knew that, yes.” “Same notion.” 

Another brush of fingers through his hair; Nick turns his head away, before Gloria can see.

Between the “8” and “16” goes his “12”; a “24” goes in the final gap. And “5”? Is smushed between the “4” and “6”; he matches it with the left’s “0”, and then looks – “1” falls between the “8” and “12”, for “10”. It works again! 

“Well, as long as it makes you happy,” Gloria says. They’re sitting on a low stone wall… they kiss…

“Nick? You might want to find that happy place again… Seriously, Rush… you’re on Destiny, you’re safe, you and Greer, you made it home… Okay, I hate to do this…” and his world… tips…

\- - - - - -

Nick can’t fit it, but he’s sure a “7” between “6” and “8” would match to “12”-“16”. 

\- - - - - -

“You came up with this yourself?” “He couldn’t have!” “The boy’s discovered logrithms!”

“They were wrong, of course,” he tells her, where they sit upon the wall. He hadn’t given any thought to many, many things. The number spacing reduced, yes, but completely incorrectly. He also hadn’t noted that the gap from “2” to “6” matched that from “6” to “16”…

“Six threes is not 16,” he tells the colonel. “I know that, Nick,” he says. 

Flaws, so many flaws! And yet more good had come from this than from his Fields, perhaps. No more doing lists of sums! Books of math came freely… “Finish this, we’ll give you more,” they said, and followed through. 

“I discovered math came with rewards,” Nicks tells her. “And also, altruism.” “You’re a fan of altruism?” “When it’s applied to me,” he says, and they both laugh. And now he thinks, perhaps, that she might some day love him…

“Nick, don’t start again…”

Please forgive me, Gloria…

He takes two envelopes from the bin, because they’re long, and fairly stiff…

* * * THE END * * *


End file.
